your families, what is left of them, and pick up whatever pieces of your lives still remain. You will go down in the history of two nations as the Lascan army that was never defeated. And I? I will be the man who failed to defeat you. A footnote in the history books, a name for schoolboys to forget and misspell.’
‘And if we do not?’
He managed a single bitter burst of laughter. ‘Then you will face an attack from both north and south, and you will all die, every last one of you.’
‘Your concern for our health touches me,’ she said drily, then took a step back on seeing his change of expression.
‘Your health? Lieutenant, I have with me seventeen hundred men, many of who have been fighting you here for years in these godforsaken jungles. You cannot imagine how it is for them. They have had their comrades killed on every side. They have had their quiet lives destroyed forever. Their trades, their homes, are all as alien now to them as the depths of the sea. They have been made warriors where once they were tradesmen and labourers and clerks and lawyers. And now it comes to this, and I must ask them once more to attack the Lascans, who have thrown them back so many times. And do you know what, Lieutenant? When I ask them, they will do it. With fear in their hearts, with cowardice etched on every bone in their bodies, they will advance across this plain into your guns and your grenades and your swords, and they will die. They will die in their hundreds, and in agony, to capture this place. And at the end of it all, when the smoke has cleared, and I look upon the bodies in red and the bodies in grey, I will know that it was my fault, because I could not convince you, here and now, to surrender your guns and go home to your families.’
Emily saw the bright spark of a tear in his eye, and she felt almost embarrassed for him.
‘It should be the easiest thing in the world,’ he continued, his voice shaking ever so slightly, ‘to tell someone to put away a weapon, to step out from the shadow of death, and go home. To turn their back on all of this madness and go home. It should be the most natural, most obvious thing, but here you stand, you warrior Lascans. Will you really tell me you love this war, this death, more than you love your own families?’
For a long, long time Emily said nothing, and she found that meeting his teary, squinting eyes was far more difficult than it had been before he spoke.
‘If the Couchant front has fallen . . .’ she started awkwardly.
‘If it has, then,’ he agreed. ‘An academic exercise, no doubt, but it if has, then would you concede that there would be no point, no earthly use, in your dying to the last man? That you would do better to return to Lascanne and live for your country, than to die here for it.’ He wiped his eyes, with a wretched smile. ‘Surely Lascanne needs every man and woman it has left.’
‘If it has, then I could concede something, but . . . You move me, Doctor. I can hear the passion in your words, but I have never counted myself the best judge of people, and I know that you are a clever man.’
‘Come with me to Locke,’ he told her.
‘I’m sorry?’
His gaze was steady now. ‘Come with me – you and whichever of your comrades you choose – to Locke. See it for yourself, and then return to your men and make your own decision. You have my absolute guarantee of safe passage.’
Emily looked from him to the downcast Penny Belchere and back. ‘You are a pragmatic people. How much is an oath worth to you?’
‘What other assurance can I give you? Do you want to receive hostages?’
Denlanders inside the camp, and who’s to say what mischief they might do? An idea came to her, though, on the tail of the last conversation she had shared with this man. ‘Tell me the secret of your guns,’ she said. ‘If the war’s won, where’s the harm, after all? Tell me the secret and let me return to camp with it, and then I will trust you to take me to Locke.’
She assumed he would refuse. She thought she had exposed his subterfuge